Agriculture gets a half-step greener

'We want the farm to be productive 100 years from now,'
says Bruce Rominger, a California tomato grower who is considering
Protected Harvest certification

Photo courtesy of Grants Environmental Organization, Grant
High School students/www.eatfromthegarden.org

Nonprofit promotes new eco-label for crops
grown with fewer chemicals

Anyone who buys
organic produce is accustomed to grocery-store sticker shock. But
the people behind a new eco-label believe that healthy food can be
both sustainably produced and affordable.

Protected
Harvest is a nonprofit that offers certification to farmers who are
interested in adopting eco-friendly farming practices, but who are
not necessarily willing to undergo the rigorous and expensive
process of organic certification.

In 1996, the World
Wildlife Fund teamed up with the University of Wisconsin and
Wisconsin potato growers to reduce the environmental impacts of
conventional agriculture. The group wanted to reward growers with
either better prices or new markets for their crops. Such
incentives require independent certification; Protected Harvest was
born in 2001 to fill that role. To date, it has certified 12 potato
farms, all in Wisconsin.

Now, Protected Harvest is
heading west to California. The nonprofit hopes to gain a foothold
in the Central Valley, where farmers grow 95 percent of the
country’s processing tomatoes, used in soups, ketchup and
pizza sauce.

"Our main mission is getting as many acres
of agricultural working land as possible under a sustainable plan,"
says Carolyn Brickey, Protected Harvest’s executive director.

Next stop: California

The Wisconsin
researchers captured the relative toxicity of each pesticide and
herbicide in a single number, or toxicity unit. They also assigned
points for ecologically friendly farming practices. To qualify for
the Protected Harvest label, farmers have to earn a certain number
of conservation points, and they can’t surpass a maximum
number of toxicity units per acre. It’s working:
Participating Wisconsin farmers use 64 percent fewer chemicals than
the industry average.

In California, Protected Harvest
will work with local growers, watershed groups, and experts from
the University of California-Davis to write processing-tomato
standards. Those standards will require farmers to keep close tabs
on weed, pest and disease problems by scouting their fields
regularly. Instead of using blanket chemical control, farmers might
release beneficial insects to deter pests, or plant "smother crops"
to control weeds. And they may still use chemicals when other
methods aren’t effective.

The California State
Water Board recently awarded Protected Harvest $425,000 to begin
working on the tomato standards. Water Board chair Art Baggett says
that Protected Harvest’s presence in California will both
encourage conservation and allow his agency to focus on the "bad
actors": growers who aren’t complying with state
environmental protection laws.

Baggett also thinks
Protected Harvest’s standards could encourage a more holistic
approach to environmental protection than do organic standards.
"Just because you’re organic, just because you don’t
use pesticides, doesn’t mean you’re sustainable," he
says. Plastic mulch laid down in place of a synthetic herbicide and
then torn up and trucked to the dump, for example, is organic but
not environmentally friendly. Protected Harvest’s standards
would be able to discourage such practices by assigning them fewer
conservation points.

Selling new label is no
simple task

There are plenty of hurdles to overcome if
Protected Harvest is ever to enjoy organic’s success in the
marketplace. In Wisconsin, certified potatoes, sold under the brand
Healthy Grown, haven’t earned significantly higher prices
than their conventional counterparts. A five-pound bag costs $1.79
— just 10 cents more than conventionally grown varieties. The
same amount of organic spuds costs $4.99.

While
that’s good for consumers, it’s disappointing to
growers like Steve Diercks, who initially thought that his
certified potatoes would fetch a better price. Diercks says
he’s now hoping that certification will help his product
stand out in a marketplace choked with competition.

Selling the label to consumers who’ve never heard of
Protected Harvest and don’t know what it means — or how
trustworthy it is — may be the organization’s biggest
challenge. Rochelle Kelvin, Protected Harvest’s deputy
director, says that for now, the organization will reach potential
customers by partnering with grocery chains; for example, Whole
Foods Market sells the Wisconsin potatoes in some of its stores.
Whole Foods’ James Parker says the company may sell certified
California crops in its Western outlets.

Laura Sayre of
the Rodale Institute, an organization founded by organic pioneer
J.J. Rodale, says that new labels like Protected Harvest may
confuse consumers who are already bombarded by information. But,
she says, they also provide an important middle ground for
conventional farmers who aren’t quite ready to go organic.

Despite the obstacles, Kelvin believes Protected Harvest
can succeed. The organization already plans to develop standards
for wine grapes, peaches, nectarines, plums and strawberries.
Eventually, it hopes to certify a wide range of crops. "We want to
challenge conventional agriculture further to make improvements,"
Kelvin says, "and we need a new vehicle to do it. Organic
isn’t appealing to a broad enough sector of agriculture."